[blackdog]

Any transition from horizontal to vertical flight is friggin dangerous. This cannot be avoided by design, computer assist, pilot skills, or a juicy blessing on the bird by the pope himself.

For anybody who flies, imagine transitioning in such a state in a downburst, windshear, hot thermal, etc... I don't know about the rest of the world, but I prefer to fly late at night when all those phenomenon have gone to bed for the night. I would really be curious to see statistics on time of day in those crashes. We have enemies who like to ruin our lives 24/7 and in bad weather too.

Military pilots do not have the luxury of staying in the hangar when conditions are not ideal when a bunch of tanks are rolling toward our infantry. Bad things happen to good people in war and in training to be prepared for war.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

An Air Force officer I knew in the 1980's said the reason the AF didn't have Harriers was because the Marines were the only people crazy enough to fly em.

[maximus@Nashville]

Spoken like someone who knows what he is talking about.

I would also like to see a comparison of statistics between the British military and the US marines . I doubt the LA Times will be looking into anything that might explain why the crashes happened, looking only to Damn the entire concept of VTOL.